Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1887-04-30
REV. DR.TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIvINE's SUN.
DAY SERMON


Smyrna irrfte: These things saith the first
and the last, tchich tc1s dead, and is 0liue."
Revelation, H., s.
Smyrna was q great city Of the ancients,
bounded on three sides by mountains. 1t was
the central emporium of the Levantine trade.
In that prosperous and brilliant city there
was q Christian Church established After it
had existed for while, it was rocked down
by an earthquake II was rebuilt Then it
was consumed by a con0agration that swept
over the entire city. That Church went
through fire, and trouble, and disaster, but
kept on to great spiritual prosperity. The
fact was, that Church had the grace of God,
an ever active principle. Had it been other
wise, all the grandeur of architecture and all
the pomp of surroundings would only have
been the ornament of death-the garlands of
o coffin, the plumes of hearse.
1t may be profitable TO consider what are
the elements of live Church
remark in the first place, that one char
acteristic of such Church is punctuality in
meeting its engagements. All ecclesiastical
institutions have financial relations, and they
ought to meet their obligations just as Ger
tainly as men meet their obligations at the
hank. When a Church of God isnot as faithful
in its promises rs the Bank of England, it
ceases to be Church of God 1t ght TO be
understood that prayers cannot paint a
Church, and prayers cannot pay the winters
coal bill, and prayers cannot meet the insIIr-
ance; and that, while prayers can do a
Thousand things, there are a thousand
things that prayers cannot do Prayer
for any particular Church will never
reach heaven high unless it goes down
pocket deep. In my Church at the West,
there was a man of comfortable means, who
used to pray for his pastor in such elongated
style that he became nuisance to the prayer
meeting: asking God, in a prayer that was
almost without ceasing, that the pastor might
be blessed in his basket and in his store, while
the fact was he never paid anything. If we
pray for TIE advancement of the Church, and
do not out of our means contribute for its adj
vancement, our prayer is only mockery. Let
the Church of God then meet its obligations
on the outside, and let the members of every
congregation meet the obligations on the in
side, and the Church will be financially pros
porous.
Let me say. also, that there must be punctlI-
Ality in the attendance on the house of the
Lord If the service begins at half past ten
in the morning, the regular congregation of
live church will not come at a quarter to
eleven. If the service is to begin at half past
seven in the evening, the regular congTega-
ton of live church will not come at n
quarter TO eight In some churches | have
noticed the people are always tardy. There
are some people who are always late. They
we're born too late, and the probability is they
will die too late. The rustling of dresses up
the aisle, and the slamming of doors, and
the treading of heavy feet, is poor
inspiration for a minister. 1t requires great
abstraction in pastors mind to proceed with
the preliminary exercises of the Church when
one-half of the audience seated are looking
around to see the other half come in Such
difference of attendance upon the house
of God NAV be a difference of time-pieces:
but the live Church of which | am speaking
ought to go by railroad time. and that is
pretty well understood in all our communities.
There is one hymn that ought to he sung in a
great many Christian families on Sabbath
morning:
EARLY, my God, without delay,
haste TO seek Thy face
Another characteristic of live church is
the fact that all the people participate in the
exercises. A stranger can tell by the way the
first tune starts whether there is any life
there. church that does not sing is dead
church. II is awful 10 find cold drizzle of
music coming down from the organ loft.
while all the people beneath sit in silence
When tune wanders around. lonely and nm
hefriended, and is finally lost amid the arches
because the people do not Join in it. there is
not much melody made unto the Lord In
Heaven they all sing, though some there
cannot sing half as well as others.
The Methodist Church has sung all around
the world, and gone from conquest to
conquest, among other things because it is
singing church; and any Christian church on
ganization that with enthusiasm performs this
part of its duty will go on from triumph TO
triumph A church of God that can sing. can
do anything that ought to be DONE We 60
forth into this holy war with the Bible in one
hand and hymn-book in the other. Oh! We
who used to sing the praises of the Lord and
have got out of the habit. take yonr harms
down from the willows. / am glad to know
that, as church, we are making advance
ment in this respect. When / came TO be YOUR
pastor we had an excellent choir in the little
chapel, and they sang very sweetly to us Sab
hath by Sabbath; but ever and anon there was
trouble, for YOU know that the choirs in the
United States are the Waterloos where the
great battles go on. One Sunday they will
sing like angels, and the next Sunday they
Will be mad, and will not sing at all I'VE re-
solved 70 settle all the difficulties, and have
one skillful man at the organ. and one man
70 DO the work of precentor: and now, from
Sabbath to Sabbath, the song comes up like
he voice of mighty thunderings.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God:
But children of the Heavenly King
Should speak their Joys abroad"
On the way to triumph that never ends, and
pleasures that never die-singl
Another characteristic of live church is a
hourishing Sabbath-school II is too late in
the history of the Christian Church to argue
the benefit Of such an institution. The Sab
bath-school is not a supplement to the Church
Il is its right arm But yon say there are
dead churches that have Sabbath-schools.
Yes, but the Sabbath-schools are dead, too.
1t is dead mother holding in her arms n
dead child But when superintendent, and
teachers, and scholars come on Sabbath after
moons together, their faces glowing with IN
terest and enthusiasm, and their songs are
heard all through the exercises, and at the
close they go away feeling that they have
been on the Mount of Transfiguration--tha
Is live school, and it is characteristic of a
live Church. There is only one thing have
against the Sabbath-schools of this country,
and that is, they are too respectable We
gather into our schools the children
Of the refined and the cultured,
and the educated; but alas for the
great multitude of the children of the
abandoned and the lost! A few of them are
gathered into our Sabbath-schools; but what
about the 1000 destitute children of New
York, and the score Of thousands of des-
titute children of Brooklyn, around whom
are thrown no benign, and heavenly, and
Christian inhuencesl IL is a tremendous ques-
lion, what is too become of the destitute chill
dren Of these cities! We must act on them
or they will act on u.s. We will either Chris
tianize them, or they will heathenize us Its
question not more for the Christian than
for the philanthropist and tine statesmen.
Oil If we could have all these suffer.